tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65747722018-03-08T09:33:13.180-05:00Prettier Than NapoleonAmberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.comBlogger3478125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-70474387276302201952013-04-02T22:10:00.000-04:002013-04-03T09:21:25.218-04:00Eddie Rabbitt: multisensory experience<a href="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/04/what-makes-rain-smell-so-good/">Why does rain smell good?</a> (<a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/04/the-smell-of-rain">h/t</a>) <br /><br />From the maker of perfume that <a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/markets-in-everything-1.html">makes you smell like a library</a>: perfume that makes you smell like it <a href="http://cbihateperfume.com/m2-black-march.html">just</a> <a href="http://www.cbihateperfume.com/premium-accord-shop.html">rained</a>. I highly recommend a visit to the storefront in New York, where they have the <a href="http://cbihateperfume.com/water-series.html">individual accords</a> (single, unblended scents), many of which are startlingly precise (Rain Storm is different from Cloudburst and from Water). Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-27404100181747696782013-03-25T21:42:00.000-04:002013-03-26T09:57:39.928-04:00Read it a couple of times, it'll make sense and you won't like it. My Facebook feed has been full of cover shots of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In. One woman was reading it on my bus this morning, intent on squeezing career tips into her commute. Any frequenter of used bookshops can trace the sedimentary layers of careerist advice tomes as they are slowly abandoned: What Color is Your Parachute? Who Moved My Cheese? The Sandberg fad puts one in mind of male 80s go-getters with copies of Iacocca tucked under their arms. I haven't read the book and don't plan to; after reading enough dueling reviews and discussions of its contents, the book itself seems superfluous. But as a connoisseur of dissections of Lean In as a phenomenon, I think <a href="http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because_shes_suc.html">this is perhaps definitive</a>. Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-76454319337165068842013-03-04T21:59:00.001-05:002013-03-04T21:59:23.691-05:00Why yes, this was the highlight of my day.<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F81761778"></iframe>Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-19028773553893608982013-02-07T23:48:00.001-05:002013-02-07T23:48:26.366-05:00I wish my hair was a little bit longer<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/epz7n8uYXQY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-69738256353474329752013-01-08T19:34:00.001-05:002013-04-02T17:22:45.964-04:00Elizabeth Wurtzel, Spendthrift Heart<a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/01/elizabeth-wurtzel-on-self-help.html">Elizabeth Wurtzel</a>. She's rambling. She's narcissistic. Is she the perfect troll? Her latest piece for New York mag begins by bemoaning the mental instability of her landlord, who lets herself into the subletted apartment at odd hours to scream obscenities and steal from Wurtzel,* and works itself into an impassioned condemnation of housewives, long-term relationships, finance guys, phonies, and the year 2012.<br /><br />Wurtzel's chief lament, though, is that her principles, which consist mostly of a dedication to living in the now, have had a price. She has "nothing" (except an apartment in Manhattan, a Yale Law degree, a job working for one of the foremost constitutional litigators in the country, a kind and aristocratic younger man, and a dog). Tragedy! She lacks bourgeois trappings like husbands and savings accounts and spends much time declaring how much she doesn't want them, but her loneliness, isolation, and precariousness frighten her.<br /><br />However, if she actually works for David Boies, even part time, there is no reason why she should have "no real estate, no stocks, no bonds, no investments, no 401(k), no CDs, no IRAs, no emergency fund"---except that her identity as someone who lives wholly in the moment would be undermined not just by the temporary sanity of calling an investment advisor or setting up automatic deposits, but by her constant consciousness that even those minor, background steps to some sort of responsibility were occurring.<br /><br />She claims that being "wiser" in these ways would have meant she'd have been a lousy writer, but this is a lazy copout. She would be a lousy emblem of her philosophy of life, perhaps. But it's the intentional cabining of her talents to depiction of her present inner reality that makes her a lousy writer (although not one who necessarily produces lousy writing; this piece has several lovely passages, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/01/08/1412101/elizabeth-wurtzel-in-new-york-magazine-confessional-writing-and-feminism/">as Alyssa Rosenberg notes</a>).** <br /><br />Her essay does do an excellent job of evoking her peculiar and subtle variety of self-destructiveness. She rejects any situation, romantic or work-related, that might hem her in, favoring instead the freedom of instability. But to do so, she divorces the idea of not being trapped from the experience of being trapped, and then gestures vaguely and impotently at the self-created circumstances that fence her into a barren, depressing inner landscape. The most remarkable thing is how this is utterly at odds with her description of how depression manifested in her childhood, when she clung to the systematic and dogged pursuit of long-term goals as the only hope of salvation from daily misery. Why not set up an emergency fund "like it will save" you, if algebra once made sense to do so?<br /><br />The present Wurtzel seems to conflate safety with security, and security with imprisonment. She divides her potential paths in two: the "padlock" that comes with family and adherence to convention or a freedom that puts one "in a constant existential crisis." That one might feel secure with one's place in the world while still living an unconventional life is not contemplated. She cannot imagine a relationship of caretaking*** and loving that does not pale into phoniness. Occasionally you have to kiss someone with coffee breath! Horrors. Better to hop to a new fellow before the bloom is off the rose.<br /><br />So much of what is here is simple rejection of the safety of an adult life, of the contentment that can come with "enough," and an animal fear of losing new sensations. Eventually we become acclimated to what is around us. It no longer strikes us like "flat sheets of hard rain." We must instead perceive subtle currents of life and change. We are not immune to the power of random beauty; we just know that there is sublimity in the experience of a life together. It is more than the sum of its parts: <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/evetushnet/2013/01/the-gold-is-a-lie-and-other-lies-we-tell-ourselves.html">forty years with one is not the same as forty years with forty</a>. <br /><br />But Wurtzel cannot be bothered to cultivate a palate for the flavors of love and life and day-to-day existence. She wants more, now, again. She wants to be overwhelmed by passion, and has pursued that goal with abandon over and over. Has she become covered in layers of scar tissue? Can she only feel things that batten her with violent sensation? Or is it merely laziness or fear that drives her reluctance to commit to the project of appreciating small variations on a theme of happiness? Calling her shallow chase loving with a pure heart does a disservice to purity and hearts.<br /><br />According to Wurtzel, this refusal to yoke herself to anyone or anything makes her a free spirit. She is, but in more senses than one. She lacks the ability to connect on the physical plane. She haunts the present with a disregard for past and future that challenges the most single-minded revenants. She is so afraid of being a prostitute or a prisoner or an appliance that she cannot become fully and completely human. She can only be, and for her, being hurts. How, she will explain at great length.<br /><br />Unfortunately, Wurtzel lacks all creativity and can only mirror herself (which raises a sort of chicken/egg question with respect to narcissism) and is running out of compelling reflections. Her decline is a sad thing to perceive, even if the writing here is sometimes amazing in terms of sheer elegance. Her words fall like water. But we can only watch her slide, like a turtleneck going over someone's head.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">* As an initial point, I find her response to the crazy landlady incomprehensible. Wurtzel says she called to cops to no avail, even though "Crazy Maria" stole her Birkin bag. Those bags cost as much as a car. Did she fail to tell the police that Maria had stolen a $10-15,000 handbag? Alternatively, get your boss David Boies to help you file a civil suit.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">** Regardless of the audaci<span style="font-size: x-small;">ousness and construction of the sentence, I found Wurtzel's jab at David Foster Wallace almost offensive<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">, for</span> its <span style="font-size: x-small;">gratuitousness</span> and for the sense that she delights in cutting him down to size now that he can no longer <span style="font-size: x-small;">cut back.&nbsp;</span></span></span> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">&nbsp;*** Non-earning spouses are prostitutes; children are proxies for your own self-esteem.</span>Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-42149762867490397762012-12-06T21:02:00.000-05:002012-12-07T09:08:24.213-05:00The Naked TruthThat <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57557324/naked-protesters-disrupt-final-san-francisco-nudity-ban-vote/">San Francisco banned most public nudity</a> and <a href="http://lhote.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-prophetic-vision.html">Ross Douthat took to the pages of the New York Times to decry the decadence of modern Americans who don't breed</a>, all without a peep from this blog, is a testament to the fact that I have fallen almost completely out of the habit of posting. Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-85966736621214360802012-11-20T19:03:00.000-05:002012-11-20T22:44:20.619-05:00In which I buy bootsBut <a href="http://www.zappos.com/frye-sylvia-piping-bootie-black-soft-vintage-leather">which</a> <a href="http:/www.zappos.com/la-canadienne-michelle-black-suede">boots</a>?<br /><br />Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-57036178095422952022012-10-11T19:32:00.000-04:002012-10-11T19:32:00.369-04:00A is A?<a href="http://whatwouldphoebedo.blogspot.com/2012/10/own-damn-self.html">Phoebe</a> asks, in light of my recent post,<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">[A]re we under a moral obligation to use Facebook thoroughly, to represent our full selves? Or, conversely, is it fair to judge people on the basis of omission?</blockquote>Nobody is under a moral obligation to use Facebook at all. But your wall posts do not just appear; they are the product of choices. If you choose to represent yourself in a particular manner, you must accept the consequences of doing so. If you provide your "friends" with no knowledge of your life beyond parenting, it may not be fair to judge you and decide that you must be one-dimensional in real life. But it is fair to judge the decision you made to wall off everything else about you. It is fair to judge you for choosing to represent yourself in a particular way. Your choices themselves reflect who you are. To a certain degree, your total self is reflected even in the tiny pool of knowledge you elected to share.<br /><br />You picked the role you play. You cannot have it both ways and claim that your circumscribed Facebook identity doesn't show who you really are and that you cannot be judged for the decision to include or omit. (I am not using "judge" in a necessarily opprobrious sense.)<br /><br />Let us contemplate the words of Lil Wayne:&nbsp; <br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bKwHSi3MG9o" width="560"></iframe><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I don't portray anything, I am who I am. An image is self described. </blockquote>Note the significance of punctuating his last sentence here. Is an image "self-described" or "self, described"? Or both? Perhaps the difference of opinion in this debate lies in which we would select. <br /><br /><br />Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-12493083417822790952012-10-05T20:00:00.000-04:002012-10-05T20:00:01.661-04:00Relational Identities<a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/170373/im-not-mother-first#">This</a> is why it annoys me when your Facebook profile pic is of your kid:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">[T]here’s a danger in returning to an ideal where women's most important identity is relational rather than individual. If we want equality, women with children would be better served calling themselves people first, moms second.<br />...<br />[I]dentifying as a mom first in a culture that pays lip service to parenthood without actually supporting it has consequences. It means that women are expected to be everything - and give up anything - for their children. Whatever women do that seems to separate them from “true” motherhood is seen as misguided, or at worst, selfish. If we formula feed we’re not giving our babies the best start in life. If we work outside the home, we must do it with tremendous guilt and anxiety. Time away from our children in the form of an occasional movie or hobby is seen as a treat rather than an expected part of living a full life. </blockquote><br />I'm not friends with your kid. I'm friends with you. Tell me about your career ups and downs, your favorite new movies, your hobbies, your hopes and dreams. You've got other hats to wear than "mom." Let's see them on parade!Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-64291041170735456522012-09-11T20:32:00.000-04:002012-09-11T20:32:00.424-04:00Too much of my wish list is on pre-order.I haven't read anything that's seriously impressed me lately. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0070NSPCU/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title">Blood Song</a> was all right, especially if you like Rothfuss and other similar brick-authors, but not grand. Sharon Shinn is deeply meh.<br /><br />I ought to be reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Bone-Grisha-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B007NKMQGQ/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&amp;colid=2GYCE7WL2JITS&amp;coliid=I3UI384DAYM9PK">Shadow and Bone</a>. What else?<br /><br />Only marginally relatedly: The phenomenon of the uber-wealthy booking famous rock acts for their private parties is well established. How rich would you have to be to essentially buy your favorite writer? It could be a writer-in-residence type thing, especially useful for those who still have day jobs, or even just trouble paying the bills. Inspired by Catherine the Great and Diderot. S/he gets to live in your guest cottage, you get to read the new work first. Maybe you buy the author's immense collection of tabletop miniatures to subsidize the writing. <br /><br />If we're going to have very rich people supporting charity or the arts, I want to see more wacky and idiosyncratic patronage schemes. <br /><br /><br />Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-2197044538099030572012-08-27T19:54:00.002-04:002012-08-27T19:54:00.119-04:00Thoughts on the false promise of magical realismI was going to blog about my thoughts on <a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2008/10/magicrealism">the latest iteration of&nbsp; the magical-realism-versus-fantasy debate</a>, but I realized that I'd <a href="http://bamber.blogspot.com/2006/10/question-time-what-im.html">already said</a> what I'd planned on saying. But the post and comments are worth reading, Jo Walton's especially. Magical realism's random, seemingly arbitrary, surreal events can be understood as "literalised metaphor" and perhaps as attempts to simultaneously acknowledge and control the dangerous irrationality prevalent in some human societies. But I find its consolation empty, and the act of reading magical realist novels an ultimately hopeless enterprise.<br /><br />Fantasy proper postulates a new order, a system of magic that fundamentally changes our world. So much of it is a simple set of what-ifs, followed through to their logical consequences. How does human nature and culture evolve to cope with impossibilities and their implications? Where does it lead us? To what fantastical ends?*<br /><br />Magical realism, so often set in contemporary milieus, pretends to offer change or escape, but ultimately cannot provide either more than symbolically. If it could, it wouldn't be realism anymore. As soon as you allow for the sort of sweeping social change that would actually result from the emergence of magic---since, logically, the emergence of the weird or fey would cause fundamental tectonic shifts in human society, the author loses the trappings of his setting. The introduction of magical elements is a broken promise, and presumes that the reader will not only accept the arbitrary manifestations of magic, but also an irrational lack of consequences from those manifestations.** Human society creates coping mechanisms in response to desperation, tragedy, and violence (sometimes unhealthy ones), but magical realism presumes a lack of systematic response to surreal phenomena. A magical event is dropped in as a symbol and slips without a ripple into the fabric of the "realistic" narrative. <br /><br />"<a href="http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006628.html#006628">If it's just a symbol, then the hell with it</a>." <br /><br />*I find much science fiction indistinguishable from this sort of fantasy, save that the impossibilities are smaller and more likely to occur late in our species's history, with consequently more narrowly channeled effects on our development. But science-fiction authors are perhaps more likely to examine the ripple effects of their changes systematically. In contrast, many fantasy authors devote significant time to outlining the system of magic and then allow the implications to simply play themselves out.<br /><br />** This insult to the reader, arising from the author's need to preserve "realistic" or contemporary (and thus more relatable?) setting and character behaviors is no less offensive when it's a fantasist or a science fiction author who lacks the courage of his convictions or, alternatively, the intellectual rigor his chosen divergence demands. See, e.g., <a href="http://bamber.blogspot.com/2010/03/why-i-did-not-like-district-9-long.html">District 9</a>. But magical realist works seem to elevate this annoying mental weakness to the status of a virtue. Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-80808108458196003522012-08-21T07:52:00.001-04:002012-08-21T08:53:14.752-04:00My cats are useless.<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vEg4SEch27w" width="560"></iframe><br />Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-77624971605142954392012-08-08T20:28:00.000-04:002012-08-08T20:28:00.173-04:00Let me tell you the truth about Amelia BedeliaVia Metafilter, <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/118687/Needs-Moar-Uncanny-Everything#4496780">the best idea ever</a>:<br /><blockquote><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=jJ5l5ls0hP4">That</a> was possibly more enjoyable than the movie, although I think it needed an "Avuncular Bane Voice" voice over at some point.<br /><br />Maybe I just want that voice to read me bedtime stories; is that so wrong of me?</blockquote><a href="http://www.metafilter.com/118687/Needs-Moar-Uncanny-Everything#4496790">Implementation</a>:<br /><blockquote>If you give a mouse a cookie, then you are only doing what is right.<br />For too long you have hoarded the carb-rich food for yourself, allowing the mouse to starve amid your decadence.<br />And for this your punishment must be more severe.</blockquote>Other possibilities: GPS navigation voice ("When Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to ... exit on the right." )Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-48513675762508255852012-07-31T07:45:00.000-04:002012-07-31T13:53:07.508-04:00Ask a Clueless Frat Boy: Should I go to law school?The author of a new Kindle book called "Learning From Precedent: Is Law School for You?" <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-bloch/post_3690_b_1699620.html">asks a bunch of non-representative, successful people about their law school experiences</a>. Michael Bloch, who is, per his HuffPo bio, "a former student government senator for the Associated Students of the University of California, the President of the Beta Psi chapter of Sigma Nu Fraternity, and a member of the Berkeley chapter of Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, International" says:<br /><blockquote>I truly believe that law school teaches you a certain way of thinking that is a great skill to have in politics, public policy, and more. Yes - it may be extremely expensive, but even if you don't want to be a lawyer, if it can improve your ability to succeed in another profession, it could still be worth the cost. </blockquote>In conclusion, law school is a land of contrasts. Thank you.<br /><br />People who thoughtlessly and carelessly encourage college students to take on hundreds of thousands in debt to get skills applicable to "politics, public policy, and more" should be ashamed of themselves. I truly hope that every cent he makes on his Kindle sales is siphoned up immediately by law school tuition.&nbsp;Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-10242443075013642962012-07-24T23:43:00.000-04:002012-07-24T23:43:00.795-04:00What is this I don't even<a href="http://feministing.com/2012/06/28/enough-with-i-date-women-and-trans-men/">Your dating criteria are bad and you should feel bad.</a> <br /><br />One commenter <a href="http://feministing.com/2012/06/28/enough-with-i-date-women-and-trans-men/#comment-355651">gently disagrees</a>:<br /><blockquote>It’s one thing to suggest that our sexual attractions relating to personalities, temperaments, interests, hobbies, familial backgrounds, hair colour, eye colour, height and size, are influenced by society, and we should all be really careful about letting bigotry seep into those additional preferences when choosing a partner. However, as soon as you start to question the sexual orientation (including gender and sex/genitals/body), you will lose 99% of the people you are talking to. The experience of the vast majority of people (gay, straight or bi) when it comes to sexual orientation is that genitals matter as much as gender identity. And there’s nothing wrong or bigoted about that.</blockquote>Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-16552489095021485572012-07-18T22:02:00.000-04:002012-07-18T22:02:00.527-04:00Love and Hate Reads<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/01/lost-in-the-meritocracy/3672/">Hunter S. Thompson + Whit Stillman?</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.theawl.com/2012/07/the-40-year-old-reversion">UMC Brooklyn parents behave in a manner that would inspire CPS calls if displayed by the lower classes</a>, hate themselves insufficiently for doing so.Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-54958716344422949102012-07-17T20:46:00.002-04:002012-07-17T20:46:00.327-04:00Public art and curious restraintI'm not surprised <a href="http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/17/paterno-name-removed-from-penn-state-program/">that there are budding vigilantes out to purge Penn State of its famous Joe Paterno statue</a>. What surprises me is how seldom this happens. Surely other monuments&nbsp; could attract the attention of indignant vandals (for example, the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_War_Memorial_%28Vienna%29">Memorial to an Unknown Rapist</a>" in Vienna).Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-21314688636555011412012-07-16T21:16:00.000-04:002012-07-16T21:16:25.163-04:00Pepe Le Raccoon<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KphBM5W6R8c" width="420"></iframe>Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-77802284320090975272012-06-26T21:19:00.000-04:002012-06-27T13:20:03.911-04:00Weekday Dinner: Steamed Cod with Asian Sweet Potato Purée<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8014/7451958566_a6237b9f74_c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8014/7451958566_a6237b9f74_c.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I have never made this with the added zucchini before, but it adds a nice creaminess to the purée.<br /><br />Ingredients:<br />3 small or 2 large sweet potatoes<br />2 zucchinis<br />1/4 tsp minced fresh ginger<br />1.5 lbs cod filets<br />1 tbsp sesame oil plus additional neutral oil, such as canola<br />1/8 cup soy sauce and 1/8 cup water<br />1/4 tsp crushed Szechuan peppercorns<br />Salt to taste<br />1 thinly sliced scallion<br /><br />Peel vegetables. Slice potatoes into 1 cm rounds and cut zucchini into 1 inch chunks. Heat a large, shallow skillet and add oil, then add ginger. Let sauté for less than a minute, then scatter vegetables over the bottom of the pan. Add water and soy sauce and cover; steam for 15 minutes on medium to low heat. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking or burning.<br /><br />Once vegetables are moderately soft, lay fish over the top and season with Szechuan peppercorns and salt (or additional soy sauce). Cover again and steam for 10 minutes more, or until the fish is cooked through. Remove the vegetables and purée them, adding pan juices if needed for appetizing consistency.<br /><br />Lay a bed of puréed vegetables on the plate, top with fish, and then sprinkle generously with scallion. Eat.Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-13027574369269185082012-06-19T07:54:00.001-04:002012-06-19T10:57:49.653-04:00The Most Interesting Lion in the World<div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0 0 10px 0; padding: 0;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/37996584264@N01/7397137378/" title="DSC_0755"><img alt="DSC_0755 by ataylor02" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7240/7397137378_08ac5b5c19.jpg" /></a></div>Captions needed.Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-29058876899929834002012-06-10T21:57:00.000-04:002012-06-10T21:57:47.947-04:00Many happy returnsSorry to have been MIA, but I was busy getting married, honeymooning, and such. It did give me some time to read:<br />- the new Chathrand Voyage book (okay, not great)<br />- the new N. K. Jemesin (very good, with a relatively unusual Egyptian-inspired setting)<br />- the new Catherine the Great biography (nicely researched but poorly organized)<br />- the second Dagger and the Coin novel by Daniel Abraham (which I thought would be the conclusion of a duology but apparently there's more to come; this series is so far the most well done and sly example of weaving brutalist fantasy elements into a traditional fantasy character setup that I have ever seen, and is superior to Abraham's seasonally themed prior series)<br />- Railsea, the new Mieville (which is, if anything, proof that Christopher Priest was completely right about the potential effects of winning multiple Arthur C. Clarke awards for only above-average work: I get it, man, you like trains and philosophy and think corporations are evil, but really? Moby-Dick crossed with Tremors, plus your hobby-horses?)<br /><br />I can elaborate on any of these in particular in comments. Your recs for books and for pleasantly entertaining television series available on Netflix welcome.Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-86583017838249992102012-05-13T14:03:00.000-04:002012-05-13T14:03:01.406-04:00Priorities<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-pv8D-ydR1s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-23182338484737365732012-04-23T19:28:00.000-04:002012-04-23T19:28:46.252-04:00Team ColumbiaI don't usually read Above the Law, but when I do, it's to watch <a href="http://abovethelaw.com/2012/04/law-revue-video-contest-2012-the-finalists/">law revue videos</a>.Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-51036557287279961382012-04-18T20:34:00.009-04:002012-04-18T20:34:00.959-04:00The Pelvic MysteriesHow can it be <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/114977/How-Childbirth-Became-Industrial#4299835">a surprise that you have a narrow pelvis</a>? It's a bone. You can see it on an x-ray. You can feel it. This sounds like a fact determinable by means other than "will an x cm baby skull fit through it? no? guess it's narrower than x cm!"<br /><br />(via the <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/114977/How-Childbirth-Became-Industrial#4300021">MeFi thread</a> on <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/09/061009fa_fact?currentPage=all">Gawande's article</a>, with extra added OMG from <a href="http://deadspin.com/5900973/pain-is-a-gift-and-other-notes-from-a-terrified-father-during-a-seven+week-premature-birth">Deadspin</a> and <a href="http://www.ruraldoctoring.com/birth_stories/">Rural Doctoring</a>)Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6574772.post-58476967582231171872012-04-17T08:45:00.001-04:002012-04-17T10:11:27.812-04:00The piquancy of East Texas<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/magazine/how-my-aunt-marge-ended-up-in-the-deep-freeze.html?pagewanted=1&amp;seid=auto&amp;smid=tw-nytimesmovies">The positively true story</a> of how the nicest man in town murdered the meanest woman in East Texas, gave $2 million of her money away, and got caught when her son found the body under the pot pies. (via <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/04/17/464407/the-true-murder-story-of-jack-blacks-bernie/">Alyssa</a>)Amberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11792206117772893217noreply@blogger.com0